Hymnals: which one(s) do you use and why?

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Our parish uses the “Gather” hymnal and one called “Worship”, which we in the parish know as the “blue” one and the “red” one. I’ll honestly have to look up the specific details for the two books this Sunday at Mass, but as I understand it, these are pretty standard nationwide. Both are hardbacks. Both have several decent traditional hymns in them (Tantum Ergo, Salve Regina, etc) as well as a lot of not so traditional stuff like the dreaded “Gather Us In” (ugh) and my personal all time least favorite, the breathtakingly insipid song, “Will You Let me be Your Servant.”

Our school recently purchased the Holy Is The Lord collection from Franciscan Press to go along with the hymnals we already have at daily Mass. We had to go have them hardcovered and spiral bound to protect them, though, because they don’t come in hardback. It doubled the cost to us.

What hymnal do you use? Do you like it? If so, why? If not, why not?

Does it include harmony parts for the congregation or only for the choir? (Our parish has melody line ONLY)

Does it include verses that are “politically correct”, like the now infamous “Faith of Our Mothers” verse that was added in many hymnals to the classic “Faith of Our Father’s” tune?

I am also interested in more technical concerns: does it come in a choir version, with harmonies and keyboard parts? Does it include organ parts? (We have a great organ, but sadly not a great organist.) Do the soloist and/or instrumental parts match keys with the choir parts (this is, astonishingly, a common problem: the hymn will be written in, say , F major, but the solo part for various instruments will be written in A flat or some other key. It’s monstrous!)

Does your hymnal include service music (parts for the Mass and other services, like the Anamnesis and the Gloria) ?

Finally, has anyone seen or used the St. Michael’s Hymnal that I have heard a good bit about?

Thanks to all!
 
My parish uses the Oregon Catholic Press “Music Issue” and “Today’s Missal”. We purchased them a number of years ago for two main reasons:
  1. It has selections for both the traditional organ choir and for the guitar choir.
  2. It is replaced every year, so there is at least the potential to get newer, “fresh”, hymns on an annual basis.
There is an organ accompaniment, guitar accompaniment and instrumental parts available. The hymnal itself has only melody. If you want choir harmonies, you have to buy either the “Choral Praise” book or individual piece octavos. The Choral Praise book has many, but not nearly all the hymns.

I has the “politically correct” words to most of the songs. One of our choir members complained one year, however, about the changes made to the hymn “Seek the Lord” (O’Connor) - and the following year the old verses were put back in (in italics).

In general, I am not happy with the mix of hymns. When I choose hymns, I try to make them flow with the readings, and there are too many Sundays where there is no suitable hymn to support the message. There are too few traditional hymns and the ones that are there may have updates to the lyrics that may render them unrecognizable!

God bless you!
 
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pilgrimR:
My parish uses the Oregon Catholic Press “Music Issue” and “Today’s Missal”. We purchased them a number of years ago for two main reasons:
  1. It has selections for both the traditional organ choir and for the guitar choir.
  2. It is replaced every year, so there is at least the potential to get newer, “fresh”, hymns on an annual basis.
    God bless you!
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Lies, lies, lies, and more lies. LOL The keyboard accompaniments are absolutely dreadful (especially the traditional hymns. They put some reallly funky harmonies there and it almost makes people not want to sing them). As far as it being replaced, only the pew books get replaced. The accompaniment books do not. There is a set number of songs, and they switch out the ones in the pew books to make people THINK there’s new stuff. Oh, and the copyrights expire every year so don’t even THINK about keeping the same pew books. OCP is a bunch of corrupt idiots out for the money. Avoid them at all costs.
 
We use GIA’s Gather Comprehnsive. It had the largest selection of the songs we normal use at the time of purchase.

The two gripes I have with GIA is that they “update” the wording in some classic hymns and they rely too heavily on certain paid staff composers to avoid royalties. This results in some good composers getting their worst songs included. But on the bright side, without them we couldn’t have such an active “Least favorite songs at Mass” thread.
 
The Worship hymnals and Gather are both published by GIA. In the beginning, there was Worship, which I believe was done with the politically correct language. Then came Worship II, which made a special point of using the original language out of respect for the poets who wrote those texts. I think it also had the hymns in alphabetical order, so you could find anything without having to go to the index. It was a great, but limited hymnal - I think it only had 500 hymns. It also had a nice section of personal prayers. Now there’s Worship again, third edition, which I think would be the best of all, except for the return to PC language. It has gazillions of hymns from all kinds of sources, but, sadly, many of them have been ruined. Gather, of course, is the one with the contemporary music, but some editions seem to have a bunch of traditional hymns so people who only want to buy one hymnal will have access to them.

In my parish, we use the Canadian Catholic Book of Worship, which has mostly traditional wording of a lot of very nice hymns. The books in the pews have only the melody line; the choir and cantors have a book with full harmony. We have a supplemental booklet to fill in the gaps - American patriotic songs, as well as a bunch of things missing from the CBW for whatever reason. The CBW has nice psalm settings, too, although the words are slightly different from the USA lectionary.

My favorite hymnal, however, is none of these. It’s the* Hymnal 1982* of the Episcopal Church. It’s full of really fabulous stuff, and even though the language is PC, I still love it. I just sing the right words instead of what’s printed. I’d probably like the content of the Episcopal *Hymnal 1940 * even better, but it’s too hard to read.

Happy singing!
Betsy
 
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baltobetsy:
In my parish, we use the Canadian Catholic Book of Worship, which has mostly traditional wording of a lot of very nice hymns. The books in the pews have only the melody line; the choir and cantors have a book with full harmony. We have a supplemental booklet to fill in the gaps - American patriotic songs, as well as a bunch of things missing from the CBW for whatever reason. The CBW has nice psalm settings, too, although the words are slightly different from the USA lectionary.
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Really? Which version? My copy of CBW III says that it is not authorized for sale in the US because the copyright permissions for some of the compositions do not include distribution in the US.
 
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squirt:
Really? Which version? My copy of CBW III says that it is not authorized for sale in the US because the copyright permissions for some of the compositions do not include distribution in the US.
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I don’t know, Squirt - don’t have one here in the house. But they’re pretty old - there’s no numeral as part of the title. And they’ve been there probably as long as the music director, which is more than 15 years.

Betsy
 
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baltobetsy:
I don’t know, Squirt - don’t have one here in the house. But they’re pretty old - there’s no numeral as part of the title. And they’ve been there probably as long as the music director, which is more than 15 years.

Betsy
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If there’s no number, it’s probably the 1st one. That would be pretty old. I hope the bindings are holding up ok. 🙂

By the way, we use CBW III … which is published by the Canadian Council of Catholic Bishops and is a combination missal/hymnal.
 
Our backwater parish still has “Glory and Praise” in the pews as well as OCP Music Issue. Our “music ministry” (ugh!) although done by well intentioned, good people, is so amateur and uniformed liturgically, it is hard to stay undistracted at times. I know, at least they’re making the effort, but we really need some help. I have a working knowledge of GIRM (albeit informal) but no musical talent so I can’t really be of much help.
 
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squirt:
Really? Which version? My copy of CBW III says that it is not authorized for sale in the US because the copyright permissions for some of the compositions do not include distribution in the US.
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I checked it out when I went to Mass today. It’s CBWII, copyright 1980, and it has the notice on the first page that it is only to be sold in Canada. I have no idea how we got it. Interesting.

Betsy
 
We use GIA’s “RitualSong” at our parish. It has a decent mix of hymns, both traditional and recent- and some that I detest, and seem to be the only one. Does anyone else hate “Let There Be Peace on Earth”?

Only the “Choir” editions of our hymnals have harmonies and descants, and the music lines to go with the psalm verses.
 
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SeekerJen:
We use GIA’s “RitualSong” at our parish. It has a decent mix of hymns, both traditional and recent- and some that I detest, and seem to be the only one. Does anyone else hate “Let There Be Peace on Earth”?.
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Oh Jan, you really must go over and visit the “least favorite songs” thread. “Let there be peace on earth” is mentioned more than once!

I deeply appreciate the comment made thus far by everyone. All opinion are welcomed. Anyone else have comments about their hymnals?
 
Our parish uses Glory & Praise and sometimes music from the missals in the pews. I do not know why these selections were made.

When I want to play hymns on my piano at home, I use the Methodist and Episcopalian hymnals because I have the keyboard editions for them. I don’t know where to buy a Catholic keyboard edition. I have not seen them in Catholic bookstores where I live. I understand that they are quite expensive. I do not even recall seeing a Catholic hymnal with four part harmony in the pew, except when a choir edition gets misplaced. I do not understand why Catholic hymnals do not have harmony. I can’t sing high notes, so I learned to sing the alto part while I was Protestant. Now there’s no alto part to sing 😦 unless I give up one evening a week and flexibilty about which mass to attend (i.e. join the choir.)
 
God in His great mercy allowed our (donated) Gather hymnals to be destroyed when the roof fell in during a rainstorm last year, necessitating a restoration of the entire interior. We also loss the Flor y Canto Spanish hymnals. We rely on the missalettes from Pauluch, bilingual, for hymns.
 
baltobetsy said:
I don’t know, Squirt - don’t have one here in the house. But they’re pretty old - there’s no numeral as part of the title. And they’ve been there probably as long as the music director, which is more than 15 years.

Betsy
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Oh my, the original CBW has some of the worst stuff to come out of the 60s. But on the bright side, the traditional hymns haven’t been updated in that one.

We use the CBW III and in that one they’ve removed most of the thees & thous – even O Come, O Come Emmanuel has been ‘updated’ – and they’ve made the language ‘inclusive’ as much as they could. While it still has “Faith of our Fathers” it also includes “A Living Faith” which includes the lyrics “faith of our brothers, sisters too”. . .
 
baltobetsy said:
I checked it out when I went to Mass today. It’s CBWII, copyright 1980, and it has the notice on the first page that it is only to be sold in Canada. I have no idea how we got it. Interesting.

Betsy
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That one isn’t too bad, although it has way too much Carey Landry.
 
OCP Music Issue…because its there.

I have talked to the pastor about getting a hardbound hymnal with parts. We’re waiting for the new mass translation to go into effect…not holding my breath on that one.

The Choir uses Choral Praise II whenever we have parts for a hymn. CP2 is actually not entirely horrid and would make for a passable pew hymnal for the general congregation.

I have to say, those of us stuck with the throwaway (literally) OCP’s are not using the whole “lets go green” arguement nearly enough. I mean, surely ONE purchase of hymnals that seriously can last for upwards of 20 years is better than 20 years of purchases that are thrown out after one year. Everyone else is using the green arguement, why can’t we? 😃
 
pm1853 said:
OCP Music Issue…because its there.

I have talked to the pastor about getting a hardbound hymnal with parts. We’re waiting for the new mass translation to go into effect…not holding my breath on that one.
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The new translation is due out in about 18 mo. according to our bishop who’s on the ICEL translation committee. We’re trying to keep our choir from spending big bucks on a new ‘Glory & Praise’ by telling them to hold off until the new translation of the Mass is promulgated.
 
We are mainly using “Word and Song,” but we also use a few selections from “Voices as One” I and II. All of the above are the melody-only versions. Why do we use those? Because the music director chose them over the seasonal disposable missalettes we used in years past. The red “Worship” hymnal and “Adoremus” are my personal favorites, but those are too traditional for our parish, and they aren’t wanting to shell out that much money for hymnals at this point. Our choir uses “Choral Praise” vol.1 and the “Choral Companion” for SATB parts. We have the instrumental parts for the “Gather” series, but as a flutist, I don’t care for many of those arrangements. I have the theory background to improvise my own parts, and that’s what I usually do.
 
Hello,

I am starting a company that will hopefully publish hymnals and chant resources. So, hopefully in a year or two I’ll be using my own hymnal!
 
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